As Different as Day and Night
by Forever.Is.Love
Summary: Ever since his sister died, Nico di Angelo has refused to let anybody inside the walls he has built around himself. When Ashley Roth shows up at camp will she be able to pull together the pieces and fix him, or will it be just like every other time somebody tried to care about him? Nico/oc
1. Chapter 1

Ashley Roth laid in the infirmary bed fighting to keep her eyes open. Her blonde hair splayed over the pillow. She couldn't move her body, because she was so worn out. Ashley needed sleep, badly, and she knew it.  
Her lids threatened to fall over her golden eyes, but she fought the drooping eyelids, because she couldn't deal with the nightmares that were sure to come. They came almost every night. Somebody sat by Ashley's side and started to spoon something into her mouth. It tasted like warm chocolate chips and ice cream. The warmth flooded her body, relaxing every tense muscle and chasing away almost all of the pain. Ashley looked over to see a girl with slightly curly brown hair and a sweet smile. She sat up to thank her, but black spots swam their way into her vision and the darkness pulled her under.  
Ashley Roth awoke again sometime later. The girl was gone, and this time nobody was in her place. The chair sat empty. The tiny stream of sunlight was her only company. It danced on the windowsill and the dust swirled beautifully in the light. It calmed Ashley down enough to slip back into a comfortable sleep.  
"NO! I refuse to let you do this to me!" Ashley slowly opened her eyes and sat up. For the first time in who knows how long she was able to sit without black spots floating in her eyes threatening to pull her into the darkness. Even though she felt better sure still had a pounding headache, and she felt like crap.  
"CHIRON! You can't let them do this!" Ashley rubbed her eyes and looked over curiously. Three tiny, yet strong girls, and one tall skinny boy were wrestling a boy down onto an infirmary bed just like the one that Ashley laid captive in. The boy had beautiful olive skin and dark silky hair that flopped around when he moved. He had a beautiful face, even though he was fighting against four people in a hospital infirmary thing. He had long cuts, scrapes, and bruises up and down him, but the worst was on his arm. On his arm was a huge, angry cut. It was long and deep. The cut almost ran from his shoulder to his elbow. Every time the boy moved he would grimace, and the cut would bleed a little more.  
Chiron -a half horse half man- stood back from the bed barking orders at the four kids. They rolled their eyes and continued what they had been doing before. The boy grunted and winced, still struggling to get free. He yelled about how he was fine.  
"Its just a scratch! ... Give me twenty minutes, I'll be fine! ... Damn it! If you're going to try to fix it then don't poke it!"  
He also yelled other things. He swore and bellowed things that didn't usually appear in normal conversation. Then again, none of them were normal. Chiron had told her most of what was going on before she passed out.  
"NICO DI ANGELO IF YOU DON'T STOP SQUIRMING RIGHT THIS INSTANT I WILL PERSONALLY STICK YOU WITH THALIA'S SPEAR!" The girl who had been tending Ashley earlier screamed at the boy. The boy looked at the girl with a sly smile and continued to wriggle.  
"NICO DID YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID?" It went on for a couple minutes. Everyone was oblivious to the fact that Ashley was sitting up in her bed, clutching her throbbing head.  
"SHUT UP!" Everybody stopped dead in their tracks. They turned to face the petite blonde girl who had been in the infirmary for a week. Nico stopped struggling and stared at Ashley.  
"Ah, Miss Roth, you're up. It's been a week since you arrived. We were worried, that you wouldn't make it." Ashley lifted her head from her hands. She had been out for a week?  
"A week?" Chiron nodded his head with a sad smile. Ashley tried to get up, but started to fall. The brown haired girl ran over and caught her.  
"Hey, lets get you back in bed." She smiled and helped Ashley back onto the bed. "You're Ashley right? Yeah. That's what Chiron said. Well I'm going to call you Ash. Is that okay? Yeah. I feel like we're going to be really great friends. Anyways, that guy with the huge cut is Nico. He's a son of Hades. That's Jessica; she's a daughter of Athena. That's Dominic, he's the son of Hermes. That's Aimee; she's a daughter of Apollo. And I'm Rachel, one and only daughter of Poseidon. We don't really know who you are yet." Ashley gave her a very confused look for a split second, but Rachel caught it and continued to chatter. "By that I meant that we don't know who your godly parent is. But anyways Ash, welcome to camp!" Ashley knew that Rachel could talk all day long if somebody let her, and honestly she didn't mind it but her head was killing her.  
"Does anybody have like Motrin or Tylenol or something? I feel like my head is going to split in two!" The few people in the room started to chuckle at Ashley's question. Camp Half-Blood had plenty of tylenol, but almost nobody used it. They all preferred ambrosia and nectar.  
"Sorry dear, no Tylenol for you. It won't do anything for you. What you need is some good old fashioned ambrosia and nectar. Aimee will you get her some? But not too much. We don't want our brand new camper to burn up do we?" Chiron gave them all a smile, before turning on his hooves and trotting away from the infirmary. They all watched as Chiron's white stallion rear walked away.  
Suddenly, everybody was moving again. Aimee was walking into the other room to, as Ashley assumed, get the ambrosia and nectar. Ashley watched Aimee for a moment. She had blonde hair that was obviously dyed a few shades lighter. Ashley could tell because of Aimee's roots. Her hair reached to about her shoulder blades, and in the front it almost covered one of her blue-green eyes.  
"Earth to Ashley!" Ashley snapped back to the "real world," as her mother had called it, to find Aimee snapping her fingers in her face. "I know I'm as fabulous as an Aphrodite kid, but there's no need to stare!" Aimee struck a dramatic pose to emphasize her joke, and everybody let out a giggle.  
"Sorry, I was just spaced out." Aimee shrugged her shoulders, as if to say 'It's fine.'  
"I do that all the time! It's really bad when you realized that you've been spaced out staring at a guy even if you weren't thinking about them... It just makes it awkward." Everybody looked over to Rachel, and Ashley noticed that her wavy brown hair was parted perfectly so it showed off her hazel eyes. She gave a cheeky grin when everybody turned her way, and Ashley decided that Rachel was the kind of person that you could just be silly with all day long, but if you needed her she knew when to stop the silly and kick into the serious business. Ashley liked that, she liked to believe that she was kind of like that too.  
Next came Jessica. Jessica had soft Asian features. Her hair was black and wavy, and she had dark brown eyes. Jessica looked more like the quiet type, but Ashley got the feeling that once you knew her she wasn't so quiet. Jessica stood near Dominic giggling. They didn't appear to be dating, but Ashley decided not to butt in anyways.  
Lastly, Ashley shifted her eyes towards Nico di Angelo. She was shocked to find that his dark midnight eyes were already fixed on her. She quickly turned her head the other way and looked to Aimee. There was something odd about that boy, and Ashley was going to find out what it was... after she got rid of her headache.


	2. Chapter 2

Hours ago, everybody except for Nico had left. A very pissed off Nico was still sitting in his bed when Ashley glanced over. Nico was glaring at the opposite wall.  
"If looks could kill I'm pretty sure that wall would be ripped to shreds and dumped in a lake." Nico's expression softened a little and a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. Ashley wasn't expecting an answer, but she wasn't complaining when it was paired with a playful smile.  
"Well, what do you suppose I do about that?" Ashley thought for a moment, scanning the room. Then, she stood up and skipped towards the T.V. She stood on her tippy toes to retrieve the DVDs off of the shelf. She shuffled through them and squealed when she found the right one. She held it up with an adorable smile and popped it into the ancient DVD player. Ashley pulled the mattresses off of three beds, and assembled them into a couch like shape on the ground in front of the television. She grabbed a blanket, and patted the make-shift couch next to her. Nico grimaced internally, but decided that he had to start people back into his life. He couldn't be that stupid emo boy without any feelings' forever. Nico wanted to let people in, he really did, but after everything he had been through it was difficult. And even though Nico had not spoken to his sister in a couple of years, because she died on a quest, he knew that she would want him to be normal and happy.  
Nico lifted himself off of the bed with in arm, because Aimee and Rachel had threatened that if he did anything to aggravate his bad arm at all that they would once again stick him with Thalia's electric spear. Nico had been stuck with the spear before, and he didn't want to experience it again. Nico sat down awkwardly on the 'couch.' He sat as far away as he could, without looking like he was trying to avoid her. Luckily, she didn't seem to notice because she was too busy rifling through the bag of snacks that Rachel had gotten from the Stoll brothers.  
"Those are from the Stoll brothers?" Ashley looked up in shock, as if she had forgotten that there was anybody there besides herself. She nodded, and her hair bounced at her shoulders.  
"Yeah. Um, sorry. To be honest, I forgot you were there. I'm used to being alone, and no offense but you kind of just blend into the shadows." The blush crept up to her cheeks, and Nico just chuckled. He wasn't angry. She had only pointed out the obvious. The son of Hades had to be able to blend into the shadows.  
"I'm not offended in the least. I have to be able to blend into the shadows. I am the son of Hades, Ashley. Sometimes it gives me the upper hand in battle! I can shadow-travel, so as long as there's a shadow I can transport myself from one place to the-" The excited twinkle in his eyes died down when he stopped talking abruptly. "Sorry. I got... carried away." Ashley gave Nico a smile, but he just continued to look at the ground. He wasn't sure why he had stopped talking. She had looked interested, but he had stopped for no reason.  
"It's fine. It was interesting, actually!" Nico gave her a weak smile and turned back to the T.V. The commercials were ending, and the title was popping up on the screen. Ashley had chosen The Lion King. Nico frowned at the three words that danced across the television.  
"I've never seen this before. I've never even heard about this before. When did this come out?" Ashley looked over to Nico, with an equally confused expression. She got to her feet and snatched the movie case off of the shelf.  
"It came out in 1994... How have you never heard of The Lion King before? It's a classic Disney movie! Everybody's seen it, if not heard of it!" Nico just shrugged. He had never seen it. He had never heard of it. He hadn't seen many movies. And this one, this one interested him.  
Nico looked at Ashley. He had to admit that this girl was growing on him, like no other had. He studied her face carefully. Deep down inside, Nico hoped that she would be the one to break down the walls that he had built around himself.

**~  
Hi there! So, this is my Nico di Angelo story but I think that you already know that. This is my first actual fanfiction. I've done a bunch of one shots and head cannons, but never an actual fanfiction so if you could read and review this I would love you 5ever! Get it. Like forever, but longer… No? Okay. Never mind. But yeah. I'll give you a cookie :3 Sooooo, this is awkward now. I'm just going to leave… Bye!  
PLEASE REVIEW SO THAT I KNOW THAT YALL WANT ME TO KEEP WRITING**


End file.
